Robert Bridenbecker, Blizzard Entertainment's vice president of technology strategy and planning, poses in front of a "StarCraft: Remastered" poster at the Aqua Palace hotel near Gwangalli Beach, Busan, July 30. / Korea Times photo by Yoon Sung-won

Blizzard executive vows continues support for classic games

By Yoon Sung-won

BUSAN ― Robert Bridenbecker, Blizzard Entertainment's vice president of technology strategy and planning, introduced himself as a big fan of Korea.

Visiting Korea more than 70 times during the last 15 years, the U.S. game company executive said Korea and its vibrant gaming culture have taught him great lessons in developing and redesigning games.

During an interview with The Korea Times, Bridenbecker underlined the significance of Korea both for Blizzard and for himself. The company established one of its first overseas branches in Korea on expectations of the high potential for the country's game market.

"Personally, I've been coming to Korea for many years now since 2001 and I love coming here. The people are amazing, food is phenomenal. The environment is always so welcoming," he said. "For the company, Korea is a very important market. When we came out with the original StarCraft, folks at our studio in Irvine didn't realize how big the success was going to be here. At the time we thought we would never be able to anticipate this."

From its release in 1998, about 4.5 million copies of "StarCraft" have been sold in Korea until 2007. This was about half the 9.5 million in global sales.

Bridenbecker said the greater-than-expected success of the original "StarCraft" here made him believe the first mission in developing "StarCraft: Remastered" was to understand Korea.

"It was about being at PC rooms and how people engage with the game, like going out together for some barbeque together, having a couple of bottles of soju and playing a match of StarCraft. That was something that the people at our office had never experienced. It was the core of the market," he said.

"We knew that if we could get it right for Korea, we would make it for everyone in the world. We knew that because, in Korea, StarCraft has become such an icon, something that is so loved and embraced by many members of the community."

The vice president said his goal is to maintain "StarCraft" accessible and playable through generations.

"One of my colleagues told me that StarCraft was the focal point for a generation in Korea and it really resonated with me," he said. "StarCraft was the common denominator, something that everybody understood."

Bridenbecker joined Blizzard Entertainment in 1995. He has been involved with the company's online multiplayer platform, dubbed "Battle.net," since its inception in 1996 and oversaw its development from the early 2000s until 2014.

The vice president said the original "Diablo," another Blizzard hit title in Korea, provided the foundation to develop Battle.net.

"We were trying to test this whole new-age thing of connecting people over the internet. That was a really cool concept," he remembered. "We took an approach for deeper integration and Diablo was a perfect game for it. Everything that we did in the early days, it helped us develop online games that carries us forward even to these days."

Bridenbecker said Blizzard formed a dedicated team for Battle.net afterwards under a mission to make its games as services that can be played for a long time.

"We recognized that we cannot just ship a game and move onto the next," he said. "Looking back, it was the beginning for us to consider our games as something bigger than just traditional boxes of products that are sent to customers and be done with. There are living, breathing and active services with a vibrant community of gamers."

From 2015, Bridenbecker has led the classic games team at Blizzard, which manages the ongoing support for the company's old titles such as the original "StarCraft," "Warcraft" and "Diablo" series.

"I love all our games. But I have a special place in my heart for these classic titles, not just because I worked on some of them, but also because they evoke memories and feeling of nostalgia."

As Blizzard has introduced a team dedicated to its classic games, expectations have been high that the company may release more facelift version of its old titles. Bridenbecker, however, hinted that the company will not work on such projects anytime soon.

"I can't say that we're going to do anything in the future because right now our goal is to make sure StarCraft: Remastered is well-received, loved and continued to be embraced by generations to come," he said.